Add FAQs and Custom Text to Your Alee Chatbot

Your website rarely says everything. Pricing in rupees, your refund window, batch timings, whether you ship to a particular pin code, the one thing customers always ask on WhatsApp but you never wrote down anywhere. The fastest way to teach Alee these facts is to paste them in as raw text or as Q&A pairs. This guide walks through exactly how to do that, how to format it so retrieval works well, and how to use a pasted answer to override something the bot is getting wrong.

When to use pasted text instead of a URL

Alee can learn from a website URL, a full sitemap, PDFs, YouTube transcripts, and raw text you paste. Each source type splits into chunks, becomes vector embeddings, and goes into your bot's knowledge brain. So why paste text when crawling a page is one click?

Use the paste-text / FAQ source when:

• The fact lives nowhere public. Internal policy, seasonal pricing, "we're closed on Diwali," a phone number you don't publish on the homepage.
• The website says it badly. Marketing copy is vague; a direct Q&A is precise. The bot answers far better from a clean question-and-answer than from a paragraph buried in a hero section.
• The page is hard to crawl. Content trapped behind a login, inside an image, in a downloadable brochure, or rendered by JavaScript that the crawler can't read cleanly.
• You need to correct the bot. When the bot gives a wrong or stale answer, a fresh pasted Q&A pair is the most reliable fix.

If the information is already on a clean, public page, crawling it is fine — see the features overview for the full source list. Paste text when you want control over the exact words the bot retrieves.

Add a custom text / FAQ source: step by step

1. Open the bot you want to train and go to its Sources area (where your existing website, PDF, and other sources are listed).
2. Click to add a source and choose the raw text / paste text option (as opposed to URL, sitemap, PDF, or YouTube).
3. Give the source a clear name like Pricing FAQ or Shipping & returns. This name only helps you manage sources later — visitors never see it.
4. Paste your content into the text box. Plain text works; you don't need HTML or special markup.
5. Save. Alee chunks the text, embeds each chunk, and adds it to the knowledge brain. Within a short processing window the bot can answer from it.
6. Open the bot's preview or test chat and ask the question the way a real visitor would, in their words, to confirm the bot retrieves your new answer.

You can add as many text sources as you like, and you can edit a source and re-save to refresh it. Splitting topics into separate named sources (one for pricing, one for shipping, one for the refund policy) keeps things tidy and makes it easy to update one area without touching the rest.

How to format FAQ pairs so retrieval works

Retrieval is semantic: when a visitor asks something, Alee embeds their question and pulls the closest chunks from your text. The closer your wording is to how people actually ask, the better the match. A few formatting habits make a real difference.

Write one clear question, then the answer

Lead each entry with the question phrased the way a customer would type it, then give a complete, standalone answer underneath.

```
Q: Do you offer EMI or pay-in-installments?
A: Yes. On the Pro and Agency plans you can pay in 3 monthly
installments via UPI Autopay or any major credit card. EMI is
not available on the Free plan. Email billing@yourbrand.com to set it up.
```

Keep each answer self-contained

Because the text gets chunked, an answer should make sense on its own without relying on the entry above it. Don't write "As mentioned above..." Repeat the key noun instead of using "it" or "they" so a chunk retrieved in isolation still reads clearly.

Add the phrasings people really use

If customers ask the same thing five different ways, include those phrasings. You can list variants right in the question line:

```
Q: What are your timings? When are you open? Office hours? Kab khula rehta hai?
A: We're open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 7pm IST. Closed on Sundays
and national holidays.
```

This is especially useful for India-facing bots where visitors mix English and Hindi, or type "cost" / "price" / "kitne ka hai" for the same idea.

One topic per entry

Resist cramming a policy, a price, and a phone number into a single giant paragraph. Smaller, focused entries chunk more cleanly and retrieve more accurately. If an answer naturally has several parts, a short bulleted list inside the answer is fine.

Put numbers and specifics in plain words

Write "₹499 per month" not "see pricing table." Write the actual refund window, the actual pin codes you ship to, the actual WhatsApp number. The bot answers only from what's in your content, so vague text produces vague answers.

Overriding a wrong or outdated answer

The bot grounds every answer in your sources and self-checks it before sending, so it won't invent facts. But it can still surface an old or less specific fact if that's what lives in your sources — for example, an outdated price still sitting on a crawled webpage. Here's how to correct it.

1. Find the source of the wrong answer. Usually it's a crawled page or PDF with stale wording. Check your Top Questions list and the question-triage inbox to see exactly what visitors asked and what the bot replied.
2. Add a precise text source with the correct fact. Paste a clean Q&A pair that states the right answer directly and specifically. A focused, well-phrased entry tends to be retrieved ahead of a vague mention buried in a long page.
3. Remove or fix the stale source if you can. The cleanest override is to update the original — re-crawl the page after you fix it on your site, or delete the outdated PDF and upload the new one. If you can't edit the original, the pasted correction does the heavy lifting.
4. Clear or refresh the cache for that question. Repeat questions are served instantly from a cache, so an old answer may still appear for a while after you fix the source. Re-asking the corrected question, or using the triage inbox to teach the better answer, refreshes what gets served.
5. Re-test in the exact words visitors use. Confirm the corrected answer now comes back, then check a couple of phrasing variants too.

For ongoing accuracy, the question-triage inbox is your friend: mark questions as important, FAQ, or answered, and teach a better answer where the bot fell short. That feedback loop, plus a tidy set of text sources, keeps the brain sharp over time. See more guides for related walkthroughs.

Worked example: fixing a stale price

Say your site's old landing page still mentions a launch price of ₹299, but you've moved to ₹499. Visitors ask "what's the monthly price?" and the bot keeps replying ₹299 from the crawled page.

1. Fix the price on your actual website, then re-crawl that page so the source updates.
2. As a belt-and-braces step, add a text source named Current pricing with:

```
Q: What is your monthly price? How much does it cost? Price kya hai?
A: Our plan is ₹499 per month, billed monthly. This is the current
price as of June 2026. There are no hidden charges.
```

1. Re-ask "what's the price?" in the test chat. If the old answer still shows from cache, re-ask once more or teach the new answer from the triage inbox.

Now the bot answers ₹499, grounded in a source you fully control.

Keep your text sources healthy

• Revisit after big changes. New plan, new shipping zone, festival hours — update the matching text source the same day.
• Use one source per topic. Easier to find and edit than one mega-document.
• Avoid contradictions. If two sources disagree, the bot may retrieve either one. Keep a single source of truth per fact and delete duplicates.
• Test like a customer, not like the owner. You know the right keywords; your visitors don't. Ask in their messy, real-world phrasing.
• Watch Top Questions. It tells you which facts to add next — every question with a weak answer is a text source waiting to be written.

Pasting FAQs and custom text is the single highest-leverage thing you can do to make an Alee bot genuinely useful, because it's the only source type where you control the exact words that get retrieved. Start with the ten questions you answer most often, paste them as clean Q&A pairs, and grow from there.

Frequently asked questions

How many FAQ entries or text sources can I add?

There's no practical limit on how much text you can paste or how many text sources you create — the knowledge brain grows as you add more. Your plan governs how many bots and monthly messages you have, not how many facts each bot can learn. Compare details on the pricing page.

Will a pasted FAQ override an answer from my website?

Not by force — the bot retrieves whichever source best matches the question. A clean, specifically worded Q&A usually wins over a vague mention on a crawled page, but the most reliable override is to also fix or remove the stale source and refresh the cache.

Do I need to format FAQs in any special syntax?

No. Plain text is enough. Leading each entry with a real customer question and following it with a complete, standalone answer is all the structure Alee needs to chunk and retrieve it well — no HTML, JSON, or markup required.

Ready to teach your bot the facts your website misses? [Start free](/signup) with Alee and paste your first FAQ in minutes.